A Frame Control Header (FCH) is used in a range of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) wireless communication protocols, such as the 802.16 standard family of communication protocols, commonly referred to as WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), and in particular the 802.16e protocol. The FCH specifies a burst profile and the length of one or more downlink (DL) bursts that immediately follow the FCH in a data frame.
The FCH consists of 24 information bits divided into several fields. The FCH is encoded by the transmitter, typically a base station, and must be decoded by the receiver, typically a subscriber station. The FCH is the first message that a subscriber station must decode for successful entry into, for example, a WiMAX 802.16e communication network. Failure to do so may prevent the subscriber station from entering the network and increase the overall outage probability.
The problem becomes severe in a reuse-one WiMAX system (1×3×1), which uses three-sector base stations. All neighbour base stations share the same frequency band and the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) conditions on the received signal are very low and therefore the probability that the FCH is decoded correctly is reduced.
Skilled addressees will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the relative dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be distorted to help improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.